Colonizing Mars 2023

Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander landed on Mars on May 25, 2008.[2] Mission scientists used instruments aboard the lander to assess the local habitability and to research the history of water there. The total mission cost was about US$386 million, which includes cost of the launch.[3][4][5]

The multi-agency program was headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The program was a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates (MDA) and other aerospace companies.[6] It was the first mission to Mars led by a public university in NASA history.[7] It was led directly from the University of Arizona’s campus in Tucson, with project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and project development at Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado. The operational funding for the mission extended through November 10, 2008. read more

Dawn is a retired space probe launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres.[1] It was retired on 1 November 2018 and it is currently in an uncontrolled orbit around its second target, the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies,[8] the first spacecraft to visit either Vesta or Ceres, and the first to orbit a dwarf planet,[9] arriving at Ceres in March 2015, a few months before New Horizons flew by Pluto in July 2015. read more

Fobos-Grunt or Phobos-Grunt (Russian: Фобос-Грунт, literally “Phobos-Ground”) was an attempted Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Fobos-Grunt also carried the Chinese Mars orbiter Yinghuo-1 and the tiny Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment funded by the Planetary Society.[4]

It was launched on 9 November 2011 at 02:16 local time (8 November 2011, 20:16 UTC) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, but subsequent rocket burns intended to set the craft on a course for Mars failed, leaving it stranded in low Earth orbit.[5][6] Efforts to reactivate the craft were unsuccessful, and it fell back to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry on 15 January 2012, over the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.[7][8][9][10] The return vehicle was to have returned to Earth in August 2014, carrying up to 200 g of soil from Phobos. read more

Yinghuo-1 (simplified Chinese: 萤火一号; traditional Chinese: 螢火一號; pinyin: Yínghuǒ yī hào) was a Chinese Mars-exploration space probe, intended to be the first Chinese spacecraft to orbit Mars. It was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on 8 November 2011, along with the Russian Fobos-Grunt sample return spacecraft, which was intended to visit Mars’ moon Phobos.[2][6] The 115-kg (250-lb) Yinghuo-1 probe was intended by the CNSA to orbit Mars for about two years,[1] studying the planet’s surface, atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetic field.[7] Shortly after launch, Fobos-Grunt was expected to perform two burns to depart Earth orbit bound for Mars. However, these burns did not take place, leaving both probes stranded in orbit.[8] On 17 November 2011, Chinese state media reported that Yinghuo-1 had been declared lost by the CNSA.[9] After a period of orbital decay, Yinghuo-1 and Fobos-Grunt underwent destructive re-entry on 15 January 2012, finally disintegrating over the Pacific Ocean.[5][10] read more

Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore the crater Gale on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL).[3] Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 15:02 UTC and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC.[7][8][13] The Bradbury Landing site was less than 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from the center of the rover’s touchdown target after a 560 million km (350 million mi) journey.[9][14] The rover’s goals include an investigation of the Martian climate and geology; assessment of whether the selected field site inside Gale has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including investigation of the role of water; and planetary habitability studies in preparation for human exploration.[15][16] read more

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan (“Mars-craft”, from Sanskrit: मंगल mangala, “Mars” and यान yāna, “craft, vehicle”),[9][10] is a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. It was launched on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).[11][12][13][14] It is India’s first interplanetary mission[15] and it made it the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency.[16][17] It made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first nation in the world to do so on its maiden attempt.[18][19][20][21] read more

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN)[5] is a spacecraft developed by NASA that went into orbit around Mars to study the planet’s atmosphere. Mission goals include determining how the atmosphere and water, presumed to have once been substantial, were lost over time.[4][6][7][8][9]

MAVEN was launched aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle at the beginning of the first launch window on November 18, 2013. Following the first engine burn of the Centaur second stage, the vehicle coasted in low Earth orbit for 27 minutes before a second Centaur burn of 5 minutes to insert it into a heliocentric Mars transit orbit. read more

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO or ExoMars Orbiter) is a collaborative project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos that sent an atmospheric research orbiter and the Schiaparelli demonstration lander to Mars in 2016 as part of the European-led ExoMars programme.[6][7][8]

The Trace Gas Orbiter delivered the Schiaparelli lander on 16 October 2016, which crashed on the surface.[9]

The orbiter began aerobraking in March 2017 to lower its initial orbit of 200 by 98,000 km (120 by 60,890 mi). Aerobraking concluded on 20 February 2018 when a final thruster firing resulted in an orbit of 200 by 1,050 km (120 by 650 mi).[10] Additional thruster firings every few days raised the orbiter to a circular “science” orbit of 400 km (250 mi), which was achieved on 9 April 2018.[11] read more

Schiaparelli EDM (Italian: [skjapaˈrɛlli]) was a failed Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) of the ExoMars programme—a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency Roscosmos.[4] It was built in Italy and was intended to test technology for future soft landings on the surface of Mars.[5] It also had a limited but focused science payload that would have measured atmospheric electricity on Mars and local meteorological conditions.[2][6][7]

Launched together with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on 14 March 2016, Schiaparelli attempted a landing on 19 October 2016. Telemetry signals from Schiaparelli, monitored in real time by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India (and confirmed by Mars Express), were lost about one minute from the surface during the final landing stages.[8] On 21 October 2016, NASA released an image by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing what appears to be the lander’s crash site.[9] The telemetry data accumulated and relayed by ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Express were used to investigate the failure modes of the landing technology employed. read more

The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight)[1] mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars.[1][12][13] It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and most of its scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 rocket[5] and successfully landed[14] at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC.[15][16][5][17] InSight traveled 483 million km (300 million mi) during its journey.[18] read more